Authority and Social Assets

本项目由两部分组成。第一部分论述了缺陷在改变人们行为中的作用。法律不会直接改变代理人的报酬。在标准均衡概念下，规律的作用即是协调的作用。不同的人或团体有不同的协调能力，任何一个人都不可能在所有的情况下都协调得很好。如果一个人或一个团体在特定情况下能够协调行为，那么他们在特定情况下就具有“权威”。我们分析人的特征和问题，使这种意义上的权威得以获得。第二部分继续了主要研究者先前的工作，将社会安排纳入经济模型。先前的研究结果表明，当市场存在某种不完全性时，结果通常会有不确定性，而所谓的社会安排正是由于这种不确定性而产生的。在之前的研究中，所谓的“社会资产”发挥了作用。社会资产是从任何生产角度看都无关紧要的资产，但在特定的社会安排下具有均衡价值。目前的研究提出了一个社会资产产生的模型，并调查了潜在社会资产的决定因素。

This project consists of two parts. The first part addresses the role oflaws in changing people's behavior. Laws do not directly change agents'payoffs. With the standard equilibrium concepts, the role of laws is thenone of coordination. Different people or groups have differing abilities tocoordinate effectively, and any given person will not be able to coordinateequally well in all situations. A person or group has "authority" in aparticular situation if there is an equilibrium in which they can coordinatebehavior for that situation. We analyze the characteristics of people and ofproblems that allow authority in this sense to obtain.The second part continues previous work by the principle investigators incorporating social arrangements into economic models. Previous findings revealed that when there is some incompleteness in markets there will typically be an indeterminacy in outcomes, and that what might be called social arrangements arise because of this indeterminacy. In previous work, what might be called "social assets" played a role. Social assets are assets that are irrelevant from any productive standpoint, but have value in equilibria when particular social arrangements govern. The current research lays out a model in which social assets arise, and investigates the determinants of potential social assets.